(5) Wed Jul 29 2009 20:19:
We got a Wii Fit with our credit card points and I gotta say it was a good deal. I've always hated exercise and I still hate it, but Wii Fit taught me that exercise is just like grinding in an RPG. You do something boring and repetitive for long enough and a number will change a little bit. And so I'll do the thing I hate, obsessively, just to get that number to change. Currently my favorite activity is jogging in place, because I can watch Internet videos while I jog. I'm jogging over an hour a day now.

But the thing I wanted to tell you about was the Ben Sisko experiment. See, probably the worst thing about Wii Fit is the way the balance board is anthropomorphized as a super-passive-aggressive coach, the embodiment of the reason why I exercise in private, away from the judgemental glare of society. In fact there's an Internet video about this. Sumana and I both dislike the balance board with its chirpy voice and wanted to see if there was anything we could do that would make it angry or otherwise make it break character.

An experiment was carried out where we added one of our spare Miis to Wii Fit. We chose Ben Sisko (pictured) because he's the coolest. Then we weighed in as Ben on alternate days. I weigh about 100 pounds more than Sumana. So day-to-day, Ben's weight fluctuated by about 100 pounds. When Sumana went on a business trip I replaced her with a heavy box. How did the anthropomorphized balance board react?

Totally unflappable. "You've gained/lost 100 pounds since last time!" I was hoping for "Hey, you weigh the same as one of my other tormentees!" or at least "HOLY SHIT, DID YOU SAW OFF YOUR LEGS?" But no. It just congratulated us.

The best part is that Ben Sisko would be seriously underweight if he weighed the same as Sumana. So whenever Sumana weighed in, the ABB would invite him to set a goal where he gained some weight. Then the next day, when I weighed in, "That's incredible! You've... you've reached your goal ahead of schedule!" And so on with Sumana "losing" weight for Ben.

I could say that this trickery was the most fun part of the game, and it's certainly the most interesting, but honestly it was a pain to weigh in twice each day just to keep fooling the ABB. So I think the experiment is over now. Ben was also useful as a testbed for questions like "what is the worst Wii Fit age you can possibly get?" (75)